A constitutional challenge by the Man With No Name to force his release from prison — where he has been held for more than eight years because the government cannot be sure who he is — has been thwarted by his decades of lying and the government’s continuing efforts to prove his identity.

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) rejected a broad challenge seeking to limit immigration detention in Canada to six months; it also dismissed his argument that his detention — with no end in sight — is “cruel and unusual treatment,” violating Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international law.

The Man With No Name now claims he is Michael Mvogo of Cameroon, but he was previously similarly adamant several other names were his true identity.

Until Canada knows who he is and where he was born, the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) cannot deport him. Until he can be deported, the government is unwilling to release him.

As revealed by the National Post, his incarceration has lasted eight years.

Normally, eight years in immigration detention is a “very compelling reasons in favour of release,” wrote IRB adjudicator Harry Adamidis in his recent ruling. In the bizarre case of the Man With No Name, however, little has been normal.

“He has engaged in identity fraud for 28 years,” wrote the adjudicator. “Given the scale of his past deceptions, Mr. Mvogo’s stated identity cannot be accepted at face value.”

He rejected the man’s requests for sweeping change to the immigration detention system in general and his release in particular.

The IRB “does not have the authority to issue an order that establishes a presumptive period of immigration detention for deportees,” he wrote.

He also rejected the argument Mr. Mvogo’s detention is indefinite or the fault of CBSA.

“Mr. Mvogo is the greatest contributor to his lengthy time in detention,” wrote Mr. Adamidis.

“Mr. Mvogo cannot credibly argue that his indefinite detention violates his charter rights, while perpetrating the circumstances which cause his immigration detention to be lengthy.”

In 1986, the man was arrested in Spain for possession of narcotics and identified himself as Philippe Jacques Hauris. Later, he duped the United States into issuing him a passport in the name of Andrea Jerome Walker.

He used that passport to come to Canada in 2005. When he was convicted in 2006 in Toronto for carrying $10-worth of crack, the CBSA tried to deport him but his bogus passport was uncovered.

Since then he has been in limbo.

A global fingerprint search by Interpol, the international police organization, came back with eight different identities. He repeatedly lied about his identity, offering a name and nationality until the lie was proved, then offering a different name.

For years he seemed content to remain in detention. In recent years, his cooperation appears to have increased and the government’s efforts to solve the riddle likewise escalated.

The CBSA even conducted a clandestine operation to return him to Africa, using dodgy travel documents bought from a mysterious Serbian fixer. The mission ended in debacle, with Canadian agents and their prisoner stopped at Guinea’s airport.

A United Nations committee has told Canada Mr. Mvogo’s incarceration violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Canada is a signatory to, and should be released.

The report was not deemed relevant.

“The opinion rendered by the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has no legal force in Canada,” Mr. Adamidis wrote, adding it was based on flawed facts.

The CBSA said the integrity of Canada’s immigration system is at stake,

“The CBSA acknowledges that Mr. Mvogo has been detained for removal for a substantial period. However, the length of his detention is owing to his lack of cooperation in establishing his identity and he remains in Canada, despite CBSA’s sustained efforts to effect his removal,” said Anna Pape, a spokeswoman for the agency.

“As detention is costly, alternatives which would mitigate the risk of release are always considered first, as are the length of time to removal, and the cooperation of the person.

“Those who do not cooperate in identifying themselves are responsible for their own detention.”

The IRB decision was made in December, but only released this week through an Access to Information request.

A United Nations committee has told Canada it should free the Man With No Name — an immigrant who has been detained for seven years because the federal government can’t identify who he is, or to where he should be deported.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said the man known as Michael Mvogo should be released immediately and granted reparations by the federal government.

In a case revealed by the National Post, Mr. Mvogo has travelled under a host of aliases over the past several decades; Canada has kept him imprisoned in a immigration holding centre for years because it could not verify his identity. Absent assurances that he would cooperate with immigration officials, and unable to relocate Mr. Mvogo to his still-unknown home country, the detainee has lived in a legal limbo since 2006.

Macdonald Scott, who has long advocated for Mr. Mvogo’s freedom, sent the case to the UN committee: it has decided Mr. Mvogo’s continued detention violates several sections of international law.

“The Tories are not interested in international law. We all know that,” Mr. Scott said. “But we have to look at how this country is being looked at across the world. We’re being looked at as a rogue state; if we want the reputation of being a state that doesn’t follow international [legal] principles.”

Mr. Mvogo arrived in Canada by train in 2005 bearing a fake U.S. passport under the name Andrea Jerome Walker.

He was convicted in 2006 for carrying a small amount of crack cocaine; after he served a short period in prison, Canada tried to deport him to the U.S. The American deemed him a fake, and refused to take him.

A further search by Interpol found at least eight additional identities for the man. He now insists he is Michael Mvogo, from Cameroon — an identity Canada has tried to confirm by reaching out to former school teachers from the African nation.

The Canadian Border Services Agency even conducted a clandestine operation to return Mr. Mvogo to Africa using dodgy immigration papers. It was, however, unsuccessful and Mr. Mvogo has since been held in an Ontario prison.

True identity or no, Mr. Scott believes Mr. Mvogo should be released.

.The mystery man who sits in jail in Canada because immigration officials cannot identify him relies on these documents to make his case.

“There’s no allegation that Michael Mvogo has hurt someone, or caused danger to someone or done something against another person, yet we’re holding him longer than if he had gone to a party and assaulted someone.”

Mr. Scott pointed out that Canada does not have a maximum period for detaining deportees under the Immigration Act.

The UN said Mr. Mvogo has been denied due process similar to what he would have been entitled to if he were convicted of a crime.

“The detention of Mr. Mvogo constitutes violations of article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and articles 9 and 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” the UN report read.

The working group recommended Mr. Mvogo be released immediately. It also suggested the government provide “adequate reparations.”

“The duty to provide Mr. Mvogo with compensation for the violations of his rights rests upon the state and should be enforceable before the national courts.”

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/un-committee-tells-canada-to-free-man-with-no-name-the-immigrant-they-dont-know-where-to-deport/feed/3stdThe mystery man who sits in jail in Canada because immigration officials cannot identify him..Canada's bizarre — and failed — attempt to send 'the Man With No Name' to Africa and the mysterious fixer who made it happenhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadas-bizarre-and-failed-attempt-to-send-the-man-with-no-name-to-africa
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadas-bizarre-and-failed-attempt-to-send-the-man-with-no-name-to-africa#commentsSat, 21 Dec 2013 00:06:02 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=405875

At the international airport in Conakry, capital of the West African nation of Guinea, four men arrived on an Air France flight from Paris: two were Canadian immigration enforcement officers; another man, the only African among them, was their prisoner, Canada’s so-called Man With No Name because his identity cannot be proven. Completing their unusual foursome was a Serbian businessman working as a “facilitator” for Canada Border Services Agency.

Their arrival — a daring and unorthodox deportation plan using a suspiciously pricey passport arranged by the facilitator with a country the deportee was not a citizen of — quickly turned into a debacle.

Met by suspicious Guinean police, there was a tense confrontation. Threatened with arrest and facing pointed questions about the legitimacy of their prisoner’s travel document, Canada’s immigration officers nervously deleted sensitive messages from their BlackBerrys in case they were seized.

The National Post can reveal that this failed deportation, which CBSA worked to conceal, exposed the involvement of a mysterious facilitator in some of Canada’s most difficult immigration cases, working outside normal channels and using unconventional methods in attempts to deport special cases of long-term illegal immigrants living in Canada to Iran, South Africa, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Cameroon.

An internal review conducted by CBSA said the use of the facilitator violated the agency’s own payment policy, security policy and even Canada’s immigration act.

The government is so desperate to settle this case

But the twisting tale of a foreign businessman trying to solve the already bizarre case of the Man With No Name took even more unexpected turns, with Reg Williams, the CBSA director who called in the facilitator and lost his position, he said, because of the airport debacle, saying he was sacrificed by senior CBSA brass who had approved his plan and were ready to take credit if it had succeeded, but then punished him when it failed.

“They knew this was unusual,” Mr. Williams said in an interview when asked about the case. “They were briefed up and down.”

The circumstances of the aborted deportation and the involvement of the Serbian facilitator angers the immigration consultant working to free the Man With No Name.

“The government is so desperate to settle this case, it seems they are taking extraordinary measures, but to get to the point where they would try to use a fraudulent travel document is crazy. The whole thing is really sketchy,” said Macdonald Scott.

The Man With No Name arrived in Canada on an Amtrak train in 2005 using a bogus U.S. passport in the name of Andrea Jerome Walker. When he was convicted the following year for carrying $10 worth of crack cocaine, CBSA tried to deport him back to the United States — but the name and his passport proved to be false.

For more than seven years, he has lived in jail in Ontario because his identity cannot be confirmed. Until Canada knows who he is and where he was born, officials cannot deport him. A global fingerprint search by Interpol, the international police organization, came back with eight different identities he used before coming to Canada.

Aaron Lynett / National PostReg Williams is grieving his treatment by the Canada Border Services Agency to the Public Service Labour Relations Board and is awaiting a hearing date.

After years of lying to police, CBSA and the Immigration and Refugee Board, claiming several different identities, he now insists he is Michael Mvogo from Cameroon. Unable to prove it, however, the Cameroonian government declined to issue a passport.

It was in the midst of this bizarre state of limbo that Mr. Mvogo, if that is his name, was introduced to Ivan Simic, the facilitator.

Mr. Simic is an international man of some mystery. He travels widely, has diplomatic connections with countries around the world, displays enviable charm and is involved in foreign media projects. Born in March of 1980 in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, near the banks of the Danube River, he maintains a home there but is often travelling.

In late 2010, Mr. Simic visited Canada on a visa declaring him to be the director of the European office of Korea’s Seoul Times newspaper. In his visa application he said the purpose of his visit was to do post-election analysis, visit government institutions, meet South Korea’s embassy staff and promote Canadian tourism in the Korean media. He intended to be in Canada from November 2010 to January 2011.

It was near the end of his trip that Mr. Simic was contacted by Mr. Williams, the director of the Greater Toronto Enforcement Centre (GTEC), Canada’s largest and busiest immigration centre, handling more than half of all immigration enforcement activity in the country.

Mr. Simic was recommended to Mr. Williams by contacts in Europe who said the mystery man had good connections in many African countries.

CBSA certainly had problematic cases — illegal immigrants facing deportation who can’t be removed for one reason or another from Iran, South Africa, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Cameroon.

But the No. 1 headache for CBSA was the man currently known as Mr. Mvogo. The high-profile case meant weekly pressure from CBSA headquarters in Ottawa and regular questions from the minister’s office, Mr. Williams said.

At their first meeting, on Jan. 6, 2011, Mr. Williams showed Mr. Simic a copy of the Post’s published investigation on Mr. Mvogo. Within days, Mr. Simic had taken the story and used portions of it for news stories that appeared in newspapers in the Caribbean and across Africa, in some cases publishing his email address as the person to contact with answers, not the special CBSA hotline.

FileIvan Simic, a Serbian businessman, worked for Canada Border Services Agency as a facilitator for attempted deportations of long-term immigration detainees who can't otherwise be removed from Canada, including the attempted deportation of Canada's so-called Man With No Name.

Mr. Simic offered to help in more direct ways.

CBSA introduced Mr. Simic to Mr. Mvogo inside the immigration holding centre in Toronto where Mr. Mvogo was being held.

“Mvogo was talking to him on a consensual basis. I wasn’t forcing him to talk to him. Mvogo started calling him on his own and talking to him,” Mr. Williams said. “Ivan Simic had a much better rapport with him than CBSA did. It looked like he was making progress.”

Mr. Simic visited Mr. Mvogo several times in the detention centre and talked to him on the phone often. It was to Mr. Simic that Mr. Mvogo finally admitted he wasn’t Michael Gee from Haiti, another false identity he had claimed, and was really from Cameroon. But even that admission did not help as Cameroon’s embassy declined to issue Mr. Mvogo a travel document without proof.

“When they walked in, Ivan Simic was welcomed with open arms, they were ushered right in to the ambassador’s office,” said Mr. Williams. “Iranian diplomats, Ivory Coast diplomats, they all knew him on a first name basis. He did have a lot of contacts.”

Mr. Williams concedes he did not subject Mr. Simic to careful scrutiny. “We didn’t do a background check, we didn’t do a security check, I didn’t think it was necessary because he didn’t have access to CBSA systems or facilities. He was talking to Mvogo on a consensual basis. And he was getting information from him,” he said.

In a matter of weeks, Mr. Simic secured a Guinean passport for use by Mr. Mvogo — although it was in the name of Michael Milimono, a name unrelated to him and with unmatched biographic data.

This was a problem for CBSA.

There was no way we can use a fabricated name on a passport

“I said there was no way we can use a fabricated name on a passport,” said Mr. Williams. “It would have been unthinkable to use the document in the bogus name and … misrepresent a deportee’s identification to another government in the course of a removal. I rejected that document completely. The document would have been deemed to be fraudulent. I don’t think Ivan understood that.”

Before Mr. Simic returned to Serbia, Mr. Williams authorized CBSA to pay him €1,500 for his time spent on the Mvogo case, according to an invoice dated Jan. 24, 2011. The equivalent amount of $2,391.10 was processed as a sole-source government contract and issued through normal channels for a government cheque. Mr. Williams also gave him a few hundred dollars out of his own pocket to pay for his cellphone bill, he said.

When Mr. Simic returned to Canada in the summer of 2011, CBSA was no further ahead on Mr. Mvogo. Mr. Simic offered another chance at taking him to Guinea.

CBSA struck a deal with Mr. Mvogo: Canada would pay for a Guinean travel document, pay his airfare and give him $3,000 cash to start a new life outside Canada if he was willing to go. He asked for $5,000 but CBSA didn’t budge, according to Mr. Williams. He agreed and signed affidavits swearing his name was Michael Mvogo.

After already getting one passport in a false name, Mr. Simic was able to soon secure a laissez passer, a single-journey travel document that can be used in lieu of a passport, in the name of Michael Mvogo. This time, the bio data also matched what Mr. Mvogo claimed, including being born in Cameroon. Issued on Nov. 25, 2011, the document was couriered to CBSA from Guinea’s foreign ministry in Conakry.

And, as unusual as that was, it carried an unusual price tag: $5,000. Foreign travel passes typically cost between $25 to $300.

CELLOU BINANI/AFP/Getty ImagesPeople walking in a street of Conakry, Guinea.

Concern over the propriety of the Guinea documents is heightened by Guinea’s recent history of rampant corruption. The most recent Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Guinea as one of the 30 most corrupt countries in the world. The planned deportation took place just one year after the country’s first democratically elected president took office and before recent efforts to curtail corruption.

“There was no reason to doubt the authenticity of the document, it came directly from the Guinea ministry of foreign affairs with a receipt. I didn’t think it was anything shady,” said Mr. Williams.

Mr. Williams said CBSA brass were briefed on the plan – including being told the unusually high price and the “unconventional means” through which it was obtained – but was never cautioned against the plan.

Weeks before the trip to Guinea, an email from senior bosses in Ottawa to Mr. Williams said: “You’re good to go on this one.”

Mr. Simic was paid $5,000 for his effort and provided airfare for the trip — $3,000 upfront and another $2,000 in cash to be given in Conakry after the mission.

On Dec. 17, 2012, two CBSA officers escorted Mr. Mvogo on a flight from Toronto to Paris, where they met Mr. Simic who had flown in from Hungary, CBSA documents show. They flew together to Conakry.

Immediately there were problems

“Immediately there were problems,” says an internal CBSA report filed afterwards by the two officers, David Fyfe and Gary Campbell, who escorted Mr. Mvogo.

Mr. Simic had told them Guinean government officials would greet them and escort them through security, but such contacts were nowhere to be found, the report says.

It was 7 p.m., local time. Mr. Simic “was visibly distraught” and making numerous calls on his phone. The commissioner in charge of airport security started interrogating Mr. Mvogo in French.

“When he asked Mr. Mvogo where he was born, Mr. Mvogo replied Cameroon. This seemed to upset the Commissioner greatly … he was confused as to why we were even attempting to enter Guinea,” says the report. “Mr. Simic was present in the Commissioner’s office during this exchange and did not say a word. He did not offer any explanation or provide any input whatsoever when we were questioned about the travel document he provided.”

The Canadian officers sent worried text messages to CBSA: they were not being let in, authorities were questioning the legitimacy of Mr. Mvogo’s travel document, and they were being threatened with arrest. The nervous officers started deleting sensitive messages from their BlackBerrys in case they were seized.

After hours of tense negotiations, the CBSA officers were allowed to leave the airport to sleep at a hotel; police detained Mr. Mvogo overnight; and Mr. Simic seemed to disappear, the report says. The next day, the Canadians went to the airport and regained custody of Mr. Mvogo but Mr. Simic still could not be reached.

Mr. Williams and Susan Kramer, a CBSA official at the agency’s headquarters in Ottawa, had a lengthy conference call with the commissioner in Conakry pleading for him to let Mr. Mvogo in, Mr. Williams said. It was in vain. Police did not accept the document for Mr. Mvogo was valid.

The escorts and Mr. Mvogo returned to Toronto and the prisoner sent back to jail.

Mr. Simic later said he was detained by police and abandoned by CBSA in Conakry.

“I was immediately detained by the Conakry airport police and my deportation back to Paris failed because the Air France plane was full. I was later escorted to Central Police Station, where I was held until Monday morning,” Mr. Simic later complained to CBSA in a letter.

Mr. Simic wrote that the Guinea transfer failed for several reasons, suggesting a bribe at the airport might have been in order.

But “most importantly,” he wrote, it failed because Mr. Mvogo did not lie to the police: “When asked where he is from, [Mvogo] said he is Cameroonian not Guinean, and that he doesn’t know why we brought him to Guinea.”

The next time Mr. Williams heard about Mr. Simic was three months later after a lengthy letter from Mr. Simic was sent to Luc Portelance, the CBSA president, dated March 26, 2012.

Mr. Simic loves the language of diplomacy.

In his letter of complaint to the CBSA president he begins it like a diplomatic dispatch: “I present my compliments to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officials and wish to use this opportunity to inform you as follows…”

When asked where he is from, he said he is Cameroonian not Guinean, and that he doesn’t know why we brought him to Guinea

The letter, obtained by the Post, outlines his version of events.

“I worked exclusively on problematic cases and long-term cases, and on obtaining documents for clients,” he says of his relationship with CBSA’s GTEC and Mr. Williams.

He says he was working with CBSA to establish an “environment for the CBSA to start deportation of long-term cases, investigate and interview problematic cases/clients, establish relations with the governments that CBSA has no relations with.

“I am very disappointed how GTEC and CBSA treated me, in financial and human terms,” he wrote. He then put an ultimatum to CBSA: “We are now faced with only two options: 1. To continue to work together on a real basis and with mutual respect, or 2. For CBSA to pay what is due to me for my services, and stop working relations.”

In the letter, he claims to have been negotiating with foreign governments on a number of long-term detainee cases, including:

Two cases of Iranian nationals held in Canada on alleged terrorism and immigration violation charges, Mr. Simic says;

Four other deportation cases, three men and a woman, with his diplomatic contacts in Guinea;

Negotiated with the Liberian embassy in Washington, D.C., and applied for travel documents to deport five Liberian men from Canada;

Hammered out a tentative deal with diplomats from South Africa about a South African gangster facing deportation from Vancouver;

Worked on a deportation case to Ivory Coast that failed because CBSA declined to pay for his travel expenses to discuss it in person, he said;

And helped CBSA close a file on a man listed on Canada’s Most Wanted list of illegal immigrants when he spotted Dimitrije Karic in Belgrade and helped CBSA prove he had actually left Canada.

Most of his work on these cases has been put on hold, either because CBSA refused to pay his travel expenses to travel to the countries for face-to-face negotiations or CBSA was unwilling to pay him adequately for his efforts, he wrote.

“It was becoming increasingly clear that Mr. Simic was using the Mvogo case to attempt to get involved in other cases to ‘sell’ his services,” Mr. Williams wrote in his internal response to Mr. Simic’s letter of complaint.

It was an insult to me, it was an insult to my organization and it was an insult to our partners who we were working with

The ramifications for Mr. Williams were significant. He was told he was being removed as director of GTEC, effective the next business day, and transferred to an administrative job, Mr. Williams said.

“It was an insult to me, it was an insult to my organization and it was an insult to our partners who we were working with. I said, ‘No, I’ll just retire.’” His request for early retirement was approved within two hours, he said. On May 22, 2012, after 14 years as GTEC director, Mr. Williams left, disappearing from the office and leaving rumours and questions among staff, lawyers, other agencies and journalists.

An internal review by CBSA’s Security and Professional Standards Directorate then accused him of violating CBSA contracting policies regarding Mr. Simic; breaching its security policy by not first subjecting him to a background check; and breaking the immigration act by hiring a foreign national without a work permit.

Mr. Williams is grieving his treatment to the Public Service Labour Relations Board and is awaiting a hearing date, claiming the review was flawed and conducted in bad faith by CBSA senior managers.

“They just didn’t want any political fallout from this. It was a hot potato for them,” he said of CBSA brass.

“I wasn’t acting alone — everyone up the line knew about it. Key directors in CBSA headquarters knew and supported the approach taken,” he said.

CELLOU BINANI/AFP/Getty ImagesIvan Simic said he was detained by police and eventually abandoned by the Canada Border Services Agency in Conakry, Guinea. He outlined the saga in a letter to the CBSA.

“I’m enjoying my retirement, but I don’t think what happened was right. There was constant and intense pressure from Ottawa to find a way to remove this individual. He was costing tax payers half a million dollars – these are the real-life problems I faced. The CBSA approach is to encourage executives to take different approaches to solve problems. If the removal had worked, they’d take credit for it; when it fails they don’t support you.”

CBSA documents suggest he is right.

A CBSA “Issue Fact Sheet” was prepared the day Mr. Simic’s letter arrived, noting it was “alleging incidents that may reflect poorly on the agency.” The sheet ended with a similar concern: “The allegations asserted by Mr. Simic are significant and can impact the agency should he take his quarrel to the media.”

CBSA also shut the media out of the previously public monthly detention review hearings for Mr. Mvogo after the failed deportation. Up until then, the Post had attended many of his reviews until CBSA requested they be closed. The hearings remained private for a year until media requests to have them reopened were accepted by the IRB.

At his IRB hearings, Mr. Mvogo did speak about the Guinea trips, saying: “I have been, you know, cooperated to deport me,” Mr. Mvogo said in faltering English. “Two times to deport me to Guinea which is not my country… and they send two immigration officer.”

They were clearly afraid of this hitting the media

Mr. Scott, who is Mr. Mvogo’s representative before the IRB, said the CBSA has worked to keep the trip secret.

“They were clearly afraid of this hitting the media, in terms of how quickly they [closed the IRB hearings],” Mr. Scott said. More worrisome for him, however, was that Mr. Mvogo was placed in solitary confinement for months afterwards. He suspects it was to keep his client from revealing the escapade.

“I think it was to keep him from talking to you,” Mr. Scott said.

Although his client agreed to go to Guinea, he did not expect it to go so poorly. Mr. Mvogo was detained in Guinea overnight and again in Paris during the return journey, said Mr. Scott.

Adrian Humphreys / National PostReg Williams outside the CBSA GTEC headquarters he presided over in Toronto.

“He was pretty freaked out. The experience was shocking to him.”

There is also evidence CBSA was planning to boast about the removal to Guinea had it been successful. CBSA prepared a “proactive” communications strategy, meaning it was a story the CBSA wanted to tell. The CBSA planned to leak the news to the Post in a “low-key proactive email,” the communications strategy document says.

Further, it defended the approach as a necessity.

“The CBSA is [sic] carried out this removal in accordance with its mandate,” it said.

Mr. Williams also defends his actions.

“On removals, it is not a black and white issue. These are murky areas — you just have to be careful not to overstep boundaries. This was not a run-of-the-mill case. It was in that light that Simic was brought in. With him, we got further on this case than we had before.

“Detention costs were escalating, he was continuing in detention, the publicity was continuing, there was no end in sight,” he said.

Removals to third countries, although rare, are legal. He said traditional methods of removing Mr. Mvogo had repeatedly failed.

“You had to try to do things differently – not illegally, but differently. I didn’t do everything perfectly here, but I think we did the best anyone could have done at that point.”

The Post has been in email contact with Mr. Simic, who acknowledged his interest and efforts on the case of Mr. Mvogo.

“I have been advised by the CBSA not to get involved in any media inquires and to direct any questions that concerns CBSA back to CBSA,” he said.

A series of requests over two days to CBSA seeking answers to questions and comment on the case has gone unanswered.

Canada Border Services Agency is relying on two retired schoolteachers in Cameroon to help identify Canada’s “Man With No Name” — who has lived in jail for more than seven years because his identity cannot be confirmed.

Until they can confirm who he is and where he was born, immigration officials have been unable to deport him.

He is officially known as Andrea Jerome Walker, even though that is not his name. That was the name on the bogus U.S. passport he used when he arrived in Canada in 2005 and the name he was arrested under when Toronto police found him with $10 worth of crack cocaine.

After his guilty plea in 2006, he was detained for removal as a convicted non-Canadian criminal. Since then, he has told authorities a cascading litany of lies about who he is, shifting to a different biography when one is finally debunked.

Canada has called on Interpol, the international police organization, to help search around the world for information. What came back were eight different identities the man used before he came to Canada.

He now insists he is Michael Mvogo from Cameroon.

The bizarre situation left officials at Thursday’s detention review hearing to deal with him under multiple names.

“We’re going to be starting with Mr. Walker,” the IRB adjudicator, Valerie Currie, told a guard at Central East Detention Centre in Lindsay, Ont., where he is being held.

“Or do you have him under Mr. Mvogo?” she asked.

“Yeah, both,” said the guard, looking at a piece of paper and then bringing him in to sit in front of the video camera that connected him to his hearing in Toronto.

On Thursday, Stephanie Echlin, counsel for CBSA, outlined the agency’s efforts since last month’s hearing to confirm his identity

When he was asked his name, his voice was strong, emphatic: “I’m Mr. Mvogo.”

It was with similar certainty that the National Post has heard him claim, over years of following his case, that he is Andrea Walker from the United States and then Michael Gee from Haiti.

Wearing a loose-fitting, orange prison-issue jumpsuit over a T-shirt of the same colour, he once again sat listening silently. He is used to the routine.

On Thursday, Stephanie Echlin, counsel for CBSA, outlined the agency’s efforts since last month’s hearing to confirm his identity.

CBSA has contacted two former teachers who taught at the schools the man said he attended in his youth in the west central African country. They agreed to look through old school records for any confirmation.

But even if they find a Mr. Mvogo attended the schools, it will not suddenly clear him for deportation. Canada must convince Cameroonian authorities to allow him to return.

His immigration consultant, Macdonald Scott, argued for his release, noting he has complained to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights about the case.

“With the length of detention, he should be released. To follow international law, he should be released; to follow Canadian law, he should be released,” Mr. Scott said.

With the length of detention, he should be released. To follow international law, he should be released; to follow Canadian law, he should be released

More than 90 times since the man’s arrest he has sat through a similar review. Each time he is ordered back to a cell because the IRB cannot believe he will show up for deportation and cooperate with authorities.

Thursday was no different.

“Your identity has not been confirmed nor has your nationality been confirmed,” said Ms. Currie. “The only reason why you have not been removed from Canada is because… of your deceptions.

“I can only imagine what has prompted you to do that. There must be a very compelling reason why you did not reveal your true identity to immigration authorities.”

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canada-relies-on-two-retired-cameroon-school-teachers-to-test-latest-identity-claim-from-man-with-no-name/feed/0stdWalker-001After seven years in jail, Canada's 'Man With No Name' may be ready to reveal true identity and regain freedomhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/after-seven-years-in-jail-canadas-man-with-no-name-may-be-ready-to-reveal-true-identity-and-regain-freedom
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/after-seven-years-in-jail-canadas-man-with-no-name-may-be-ready-to-reveal-true-identity-and-regain-freedom#commentsThu, 24 Oct 2013 21:37:08 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=381036

Every 28 days for the past seven years he has sat through a detention review hearing and each time he has been ordered back to jail despite facing no criminal charge. On Thursday, Canada’s “Man With No Name” again sat slumped in a chair in a prison-issue orange jumpsuit, just as he did three years ago when the National Post first revealed his bizarre state of limbo.

And, once again, he was ordered to return to his cell because border agents are unable to confirm his name.

Until the government knows who he is and where he is from, it cannot deport him. And until it can deport him, it is unwilling to release him.

“It is virtually certain that if I released you, you would simply go underground, obtain another identity and obtain false documents like you have been doing since 1986,” said Andrew Laut, an Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator presiding over what is perhaps the 90th detention review for the man officially known as Andrea Jerome Walker, even though that is not his name.

If I released you, you would simply obtain another identity and obtain false documents like you have been doing since 1986

“If I was to order your release,” Mr. Laut said, “I would have to do so knowing you will disappear.”

This time, however, immigration consultant Macdonald Scott, who is now representing him, said things are different.

His client is finally co-operating with authorities, he said, and has provided his true name — Michael Mvogo from Cameroon. He also petitioned the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights asking for international intervention into what he calls “arbitrary and indefinite detention.”

“He’s been out of Cameroon so long he just didn’t want to go back. His time in jail, though, has broken him down,” said Mr. Scott.

Related

“Is that information — at this point — believable?” asked Mr. Laut. “You also provided detailed descriptions and documentation about you being Andrea Jerome Walker.”

For at least 27 years he lived under false identities. He entered Spain in 1986 under the name of a Frenchman born in Paris. After an arrest there, he left under a different false name.

He came to Canada in 2005 with a U.S. passport in the name of Mr. Walker.

A year later, while living in a homeless shelter in Toronto, police caught him with $10 worth of crack cocaine. After his guilty plea the government tried to deport him to the United States but his passport was revealed to be bogus.

FilePolice caught the man officially known as Andrea Jerome Walker with $10 worth of crack cocaine. After his guilty plea the government tried to deport him to the United States, but his passport was revealed to be bogus.

Thus began his state of limbo, seemingly content in jail — serving more time than many serve for a manslaughter conviction — while spinning stories, at first insisting he was an American who was given away as a baby and grew up on the margins in New York soup kitchens.

In 2010, prompted in part by a Post investigation that revealed his case and examined his claims, he finally admitted his name was not Mr. Walker.

That truth, however, was followed by new lies.

He said he was really Michael Gee from Haiti, the son of a drug-addled mother who was raised in the family of a voodoo priest.

When that was debunked, he claimed to be Mr. Mvogo. But Cameroonian authorities have not confirmed his citizenship, birth or baptism records nor found any relatives, and without proof, will not issue him travel documents.

Canada Border Services Agency even put him on a plane with border agents and flew him to Guinea in an attempt to find a place that would take him, but were turned away by the West African country.

Mr. Laut praised CBSA’s “Herculean efforts” to try to verify his identity, including having speech pattern and voice analysis done. A teacher at the school he said he went to in Cameroon was found and interviewed. The information from both men was compared. Some details were accurate.

You have very, very strong determination not to follow the laws of Canada

Still, Mr. Laut said, Mr. Mvogo — if that is his name — has only himself to blame for his detention.

“Instead of providing truthful information … you made another choice, to remain in detention,” said Mr. Laut.

“You chose to provide false information to this board, to the CBSA, to other governments, to people who interviewed you, who tried to help you … despite the fact you continue to remain in jail, where I recognize conditions are not pleasant.

“It shows you have very, very strong determination not to follow the laws of Canada.”

By now, Mr. Mvogo seems used to such damning assessments of his credibility. He sat quietly during Mr. Laut’s ruling. When it was over he said “thanks,” slowly stretched his muscular arms and stood to return to his cell.

Canada’s “Man With No Name,” who has been in prison for more than five years because border agents are unable to figure out who he is, has been caught in another audacious lie, showing himself to be an inventive, although not sophisticated, conman thwarting all efforts to deport him.

Border agents have debunked his latest insistence, that he is a citizen of Cameroon, by suggesting his knowledge of his supposed homeland was cribbed from brochures he grabbed when taken to the Cameroonian High Commission in Ottawa to be interviewed about his past by diplomatic staff.

The revelations come as he passes a milestone, his fifth anniversary of incarceration without charge because of Canada’s inability to identify him, making it one of the most vexing immigration cases.

“He’s clearly strongly motivated not to co-operate with removal efforts,” declared Immigration and Refugee Board judge Ama Beecham at his September detention review, one of several dozen required, monthly hearings he has sat through.

The man was originally known as Andrea Jerome Walker, the name on the U.S. passport he carried when he came to Canada in 2005. A year later, while living in a homeless shelter in Toronto, police caught him with $10 worth of crack cocaine.

He would have been deported had the Canada Border Services Agency known where to send him.

He insisted he was an American and told a colourful tale of being given away as a baby and growing up in New York soup kitchens, but U.S. authorities proved it wasn’t true and cancelled his bogus passport.

He then reluctantly said he was from Haiti, the son of a drug-addled mother who was raised in the family of a voodoo priest. When that was finally debunked, he said he was finally coming clean.

“The Lord told me it’s time to tell the truth,” he told the IRB this spring. “I want to go back to Cameroon and, you know, to preach the gospel to my people.” He said his name was Michael Mvogo and he was born in a coastal village between two wildlife reserves, home to African forest elephants and mangrove trees.

CBSA officials took him to Ottawa this summer to meet with diplomatic officials at the Cameroonian embassy but the interview was not particularly revealing. Officials in Cameroon could find no record of him there and declared he was not a Cameroonian citizen.

Upon his return to jail in Toronto, however, he suddenly wrote out a list of things he supposedly remembered about his life in Cameroon, covering sports, politics, religion and other things.

The information is suspect, the CBSA told a recent IRB hearing.

“When he left the High Commission interview in January, he was provided with an assortment of literature… about Cameroon and its history and facts. It’s possible that he has simply educated himself by reading this literature and is now regurgitating this information,” said Stephanie Echlin, a lawyer representing the CBSA, at the hearing.

The IRB is finding it hard to believe anything he tells them, the man was told.

“You have been untruthful to the minister and to this division so many times that your word simply cannot be trusted or relied upon,” said Ms. Beecham.

“This is the third identity which he has asserted as his true identity. The agency has made diligent efforts to pursue each and every one of the leads provided by him, but clearly until Mr. Walker decides to provide truthful information concerning his origins, it will be difficult for the agency to effect removal.

“For reasons only known to himself, he’s chosen not to do this and he’s further chosen to obstruct removal efforts by providing false information on an ongoing basis.”

To help solve the mystery, Canada has already sought help from Haiti, Nigeria, Angola, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Guinea. A Nigerian diplomat visited him in jail, asking him trick questions. U.S. Homeland Security officials searched yearbooks, mug shots and government databases. His fingerprints were sent to European police forces.

The perplexing case was first revealed on the front page of the National Post in May 2010, unveiling a photograph of the mystery man. A tips line and email address – 905-405-3887; walker@cbsa-asfc.gc.ca –was also established by CBSA.

The government is now awaiting any answers from Interpol, the international police agency.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/mystery-refugee-claimant-continues-to-hide-true-identity/feed/2stdMan With No Name (Handout)'Man With No Name' a liar, immigration board sayshttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/man-with-no-name-a-liar-immigration-board-says
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TORONTO • The so-called “Man With No Name,” who has been in prison for almost five years because border agents are unable to confirm his identity, was lambasted by the Immigration and Refugee Board on Friday for his manipulation, deception and lies.

Appearing before the IRB for a detention review, the man officially called Andrea Jerome Walker but who has claimed several identities while living illegally in Canada, was ordered to remain in prison, despite facing no charges.

“Only a manipulative mind could spin these webs of deceit,” said Ama Beecham, the IRB adjudicator.

He is a master of creating “false but convincing stories,” she said, with “obvious access to fraudulent documents and a capacity to use them around the world … leading authorities on a wild goose chase.”

It is one of the most perplexing immigration cases.

He arrived in Canada in 2005 with a U.S. passport in the name of Mr. Walker. A year later, while living in a homeless shelter in Toronto, police caught him with $10 worth of crack cocaine.

His drug conviction made him ineligible to remain in Canada but when Canada Border Services Agency tried to deport him, U.S. officials said his identity was a fraud.

He has been in a bizarre state of limbo ever since: Until Canadian officials know where to send him, they cannot deport him; until they can deport him they will not release him.

The stalemate has continued year after year, through 66 monthly detention reviews, as mandated by law.

For three years and nine months, he insisted he was Mr. Walker, an American who was given away as a baby and grew up in soup kitchens, a story he told Toronto police, CBSA, the Federal Court of Canada, the IRB, U.S. State Department, Correctional Service of Canada and his own lawyers.

“You were adamant, even in the face of contrary evidence, that you were this person,” Ms. Beecham said.

But when his fingerprints were matched in 2010 to a Haiti-born man named Michael Gee, he vociferously clung to that name for seven months, insisting he was born in Port-au-Prince and grew up in a family with a voodoo priest as patriarch.

This year, when Spanish officials matched his fingerprints to the name Michael Myogo, born Sept. 14, 1959 with a criminal record for drug trafficking, resisting arrest and public mischief, he said he was finally going to tell the truth: The Spanish authorities had misspelled his real last name. It was Mvogo and he was from Cameroon.

On Friday, his firmness in maintaining whatever identity he currently claims was on display from the start, where he insisted he was Michael Mvogo.

Laura Brittain, representing him, said she fears Cameroon won’t want him and will not produce a travel document, leaving him in an indefinite incarceration. “It is becoming an issue that the efforts are not securing results,” she said.

He will remain in jail until his next review on June 24.

National Post

ahumphreys@nationalpost.com

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/man-with-no-name-a-liar-immigration-board-says/feed/2std'Man with No Name' to appear for 64th detention reviewhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/man-with-no-name-in-canadian-prison-to-appear-for-64th-detention-review
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/man-with-no-name-in-canadian-prison-to-appear-for-64th-detention-review#commentsFri, 27 May 2011 13:45:29 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=67302

TORONTO – The so-called “Man With No Name,” who has been stuck in prison for almost five years because Canada’s border agents have been unable to confirm who he really is, appears once more before an Immigration and Refugee Board tribunal Friday morning, looking to be released but knowing it will not likely happen.

This is his 64th detention review.

Related

One of the most perplexing immigration cases may finally be coming to a close as authorities try to confirm new revelations about a man who has chosen to live in a prison rather than reveal his true identity, which is needed before Canadian authorities can deport him.

It now appears he is Michael Mvogo, 51, a citizen of Cameroon, born in a coastal village between two expansive wildlife reserves, home to African forest elephants and mangrove trees.

But no one can be sure because he has lied several times about his identity.

Unless Canada can identify his citizenship they don’t know where to send them and cannot deport him.

A decision on whether to keep him in prison while authorities check out his latest story is expected Friday morning.

He is called “The Man With No Name,” but the real problem is he has too many – that of an American who was given away as a baby and grew up in soup kitchens; that of a Haitian son of a drug-addled mother raised in the family of a voodoo priest, and that of a Cameroonian itinerant worker.

One of the most perplexing immigration cases may finally be coming to a close with new revelations about a man who has chosen to live in a prison for almost five years rather than reveal his true identity, which is needed before Canadian authorities can deport him.

It now appears he is Michael Mvogo, 51, a citizen of Cameroon, born in a coastal village between two expansive wildlife reserves, home to African forest elephants and mangrove trees.

“I left Cameroon in 1979 to go and find a better life,” he said. “I’ve been in jail for a long time and I want to get out and preach the gospel, because I’m a preacher,” he said at a mandatory Immigration and Refugee Board detention review, one of 63 hearings he has sat through while officials waded through his various stories and claims.

“The Lord told me, ‘It’s time to tell the truth,’ ” he said. “I want to go back to Cameroon and, you know, to preach the gospel to my people.”

The new name is being treated cautiously, given his record of lies and obstinacy.

Canada Border Services Agency still refers to him as Andrea Jerome Walker, the name on the U.S. passport he had when he came to Canada in 2005. A year later, while living in a homeless shelter in Toronto, police caught him with $10 worth of crack cocaine.

He pleaded guilty and he was headed for deportation when U.S. authorities revoked his passport, claiming it was fraudulent. That left him in a bizarre state of limbo: Until Canadian officials know where to send him, they can’t deport him; until they can deport him, they won’t release him.

For years, he didn’t waver from his story that he was born in Delaware and grew up on the streets of New York after his mother gave him away.

A fingerprint check in the United States matched the man to a Michael Gee, born in Haiti, who served a sentence for drug possession on Rikers Island in New York City in 1993.

He denied that was his name but later said it was, claiming he was born in Portau-Prince and grew up in a family with a voodoo priest as patriarch.

To help solve the mystery, Canada sought help from Haiti, Nigeria, Angola, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Guinea. A Nigerian diplomat visited him in jail, asking him trick questions. U.S. Homeland Security officials searched yearbooks, mug shots and government databases. His fingerprints were sent to European police forces.

The perplexing case was first chronicled on the front page of the National Post last May, revealing a photograph of the unidentified man.

The apparent breakthrough came from Spanish authorities.

In January, CBSA sent his fingerprints to Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, and a check showed a match in Madrid for a Michael Myogo, born Sept. 14, 1959. In Spain, he has a record for drug trafficking, resisting arrest and public mischief.

When CBSA officers told him of the new information, he said he was finally going to tell the truth: The Spanish authorities had misspelled his real last name. It was, in fact, Mvogo.

He said he is from Kribi, which is a coastal town between the Douala-Edéa Wildlife Reserve to the north and the Campo Reserve to the south.

“I didn’t want to go back because it’s a long time. It’s 32 years, and if I go back to Cameroon now, I will be like a new person. I know nobody there, and my father -I don’t believe that he’s alive. That’s why I didn’t want to go back to Africa,” he said.

He was taken to Cameroon’s high commission in Ottawa and interviewed by government officials. He told them about his family, where he lived, where he went to school and where he went to once he left.

Ntaribo Ashu, Cameroon’s First Secretary to Canada, who interviewed the man, said his government is investigating the claims.

“We have sent information we got from him during the interview to Cameroon and the appropriate authorities, including the police department, for investigation, and we have not yet got any response,” Mr. Ashu told the Post. “Until it is proven, we cannot take him.”

Meanwhile, he remains in jail in the Toronto West Detention Centre, despite facing no charge. Canada is anxious to deport him.

“You have shown in your actions over the last number of years a total disregard for Canadian immigration law and an extremely strong desire to remain in Canada,” Iris Kohler, an IRB adjudicator, told him at his hearing.

“The new information that you’ve provided does not change that.”

Until travel documents are arranged from the man’s homeland, however, he will remain in Canada.

“The CBSA is committed to authenticating Mr. Walker’s identity in order to proceed with enforcement of the removal order,” said Vanessa Barrasa, a spokeswoman for CBSA. “We continue to pursue Cameroon as a country of nationality and cannot speculate on timelines or potential outcomes.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/breakthrough-tracks-mystery-refugee-claimant-back-to-cameroon/feed/0stdPodcast: A month at Woodwards, the man with no name revealedhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/podcast-a-month-at-woodwards-the-man-with-no-name-revealed
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/podcast-a-month-at-woodwards-the-man-with-no-name-revealed#commentsFri, 09 Jul 2010 22:17:29 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=14805

Adrian Humphreys updates us on the case of the man with no name, a mysterious individual who is being in a Canadian prison since 2006 and refuses to reveal his true identity. He’s written a three-page letter about his identity. But is it true?

He sat placidly in his prison-issue jumpsuit, a sombre expression fixed on his face as the harsh detention centre lights reflected off his shiny, dark skin, highlighting an old, four-inch scar down the centre of his forehead.

He did not speak. Or even move. He was so still, in fact, the motion-sensitive video camera pointing at him in the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay repeatedly shut off as it failed to detect any movement. It suggested the patience of a man who has, so far, shown remarkable resilience in saying and doing little. He insists his name is Andrea Jerome Walker, born in Wilmington, Del., on Jan. 22, 1973. The governments of Canada and the United States are adamant he is not.

That places him in a bizarre state of limbo: Until officials know who he is, they cannot deport him; until they can deport him, they will not release him. Since Sept. 20, 2006, he has been in jail, so far serving the equivalent of a manslaughter sentence, although he is charged with no crime. And there is no end in sight. He is the unknown man.

“Subject has no family anywhere in the world. There is no one who knows him and no one would be able to vouch for him,” says an internal government report on his case. “He claims to be entirely alone in this world.”

Canadian officials have twice sent his fingerprints to Haiti seeking his identity. They have asked officials in Angola, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Guinea for help. A Nigerian diplomat visited him in jail, asking him trick questions. U.S. Homeland Security officials searched yearbooks, mug shots and government databases.

None of it has helped.

When given the chance to plead his case with an interested reporter visiting him in prison last week, he declined. Clearly he is no Hurricane Carter, anxious to get word of his ridiculous predicament to the outside world.

Instead, he seems content to sit in his cell, behind coils of razor wire, high fences and towering spotlights with no end in sight.

The stakes are high. Immigration officials fear letting him out will encourage others to adopt a similarly defiant stance. If he is released and not deported it will make a mockery of Canada’s immigration law.

From Mr. Walker’s perspective, his imprisonment is a travesty of justice, a Kafka-esque, indefinite incarceration without evidence of any crime; mixed with the outrage of being stripped of an identity and citizenship he insists is his.

Then there is another concern.

If he is not who he says he is, then what fate does he fear — should his true identity be revealed– that makes wasting away in a crowded jail such a palatable alternative? What awaits him if his identity is discovered?

What might he have done?

—

Mr. Walker– as the government continues to call him despite declaring he is not really Mr. Walker — arrived in Canada from New York as a visitor in April 2005. He carried a U.S. passport and was told at the border to leave within nine days.

Instead, he lived here quietly until, in September 2006, he was approached in downtown Toronto by two police officers on bicycles.

“They found two little pieces of cocaine in my pocket,” he told an immigration detention review hearing in 2006, back when he was more talkative. “My lawyer told me to plead guilty and then I would go back to the United States.”

The conviction did make him subject to deportation and when

Canada Border Services Agency officials arrived to collect him at the police station it seemed a routine case.

But questions about his identity immediately arose. When CBSA officers arrived, Toronto police were already asking Mr. Walker why he looked older than his passport said he was. He said there was a typo and it should say 1963 not 1973, according to a CBSA summary of his case.

When asked why he spoke with a non-American accent, he said his mother was born in Cameroon. When a CBSA officer spoke to him in French, Mr. Walker seemed more fluent than in English, saying he learned French and Spanish during travels abroad.

The more Mr. Walker spoke, the less his story was believed.

A few weeks later, officials from the U.S. consulate in Toronto spent an hour with Mr. Walker in the Don Jail.

“We do not believe him to be a U.S. citizen,” they wrote in a U.S. Department of State memo. They said he spoke with a thick accent, either Caribbean or French sub-Saharan African.

“He claims his mother forced him into alcohol abuse at an early age and then gave him to some woman in New York City to raise. He could only offer the woman’s name being something like ‘Marie,’ ” the memo says.

He told the Americans he learned French during a visit to France and then, at another point, that he learned it from a Caribbean girlfriend in New York. Her name was also something like “Marie.”

U.S. officials found no record of Mr. Walker prior to 2001 and promptly revoked his passport.

About the only thing everyone agrees on is that he is not a Canadian, but without travel documents or a country of origin CBSA has nowhere to send him.

“They don’t believe that I’m a U.S. citizen,” Mr. Walker complained to the Immigration and Refugee Board, “because everyone says I have a French accent.”

At his first IRB detention review in October 2006, he tried to explain: He grew up “with a woman who was a friend of my mother, a Puerto Rican.

“Even when I was in New York I used to go to church. I study Bible school in Spanish, so that’s why I have a funny accent.” Yet, at another hearing, he said he learned French from his mother.

Such inconsistencies have not helped him. That IRB adjudicators have cited them as reasons for his detention may explain why he stopped talking.

In April 2007, a CBSA officer tried again.

“I offered Mr. Walker a piece of paper to write down his name and date of birth and any other information with which to assist us in returning him to his country of residence,” the officer says in a sworn affidavit.

“I found Mr. Walker to be completely unco-operative.”

At a 2007 IRB hearing, adjudicator Harry Adamidis ruled that Mr. Walker must remain behind bars, saying: “You have been detained a very, very long time, and also at this point there does not appear to be a solution to allow you to be released sometime in the foreseeable future.

“However, given the fact that you’ve been unco-operative with

regards to your identity, I have to agree with the minister that you shouldn’t be rewarded by that with release.”

—

Before he ran afoul of Canada’s drug laws, little is known about Mr. Walker. He had a troubled early life in Delaware, he said, never knowing his father, and his mother giving him away.

“I went to the Bronx when I was a little boy,” he said at an IRB hearing in 2008. From the age of seven he lived on the streets of New York and never went to school, he said, explaining why he has no family or school records to support his story.

Mr. Walker said he spent several years in the U.S. merchant marine travelling the world, and yet there are no records of him earning an income, joining a union or even of having a passport at that time.

His first request for a U.S. passport in 2001 was denied for lack of documentation. He later returned with more ID cards and was issued a passport in 2002.

“None of these documents is convincing proof of identity and all of them could be obtained on the strength of a borrowed or stolen

birth certificate,” a CBSA report says.

According to a records search by the National Post, the address on Mr. Walker’s temporary New York driver’s licence is that of the Door of Salvation Ministries, a Christian-run soup kitchen in the Bronx.

A spokesman at the mission said it was there long before 2001 when Mr. Walker’s ID was issued but could not confirm if anyone with that name ever stayed there.

Once he had a passport, Mr. Walker travelled to Spain in 2004 but was returned to the United States under a deportation order after a drug conviction. Shortly after, he came to Canada.

His connection to Christian missions continued. Almost immediately after arriving, he joined the Follower’s Mission, a Christian outreach serving addicts and outcasts in Toronto’s Queen and Sherbourne area, the Post has learned.

He made little impact on staff and his name brings back no memories, said Young Wha Kang, the mission’s founder.

“That was five years ago,” she said, apologizing.

Mr. Walker’s arrest in 2006, that triggered his predicament, took place around the corner from the mission’s front door.

Despite declaring his life for Jesus Christ– “I’ma believer. I’ma Christian,” he told the IRB in 2008 –he has a long history with drugs.

When Canada sent his fingerprints to the United States, officials did find one hit in their system, but it was not for a Mr. Walker. They matched a man arrested for drug possession in New York City in 1993. The name of the man who served the sentence on Rikers Island was Michael Gee Hearns, born in Haiti on Sept. 14, 1966.

Mr. Walker admited he was that convict but said the name was just an alias, derived from “Mike Gee,” an American hip-hop artist.

“I love his music, that’s why I use his name,” Mr. Walker said.

“I never been in Haiti. I don’t even know where Haiti is.”

Even that clue has not helped. Haitian authorities have not been able to identify him, even with a photograph, fingerprints and the alternate name.

In the meantime, CBSA arranged for a specialist with the Nigerian High Commission in Ottawa to interview Mr. Walker. He spent half an hour with him, hoping he would reveal telling details through trick questions.

His assessment? Mr. Walker is definitely from Africa but not from Nigeria. Nor is he from the north or the south of the continent. That leaves a lot of troubled central African nations still in the mix.

Since then, CBSA has asked several African states for help but received no answers.

—

After three years and eight months of being locked up, Mr. Walker only grunted his acknowledgement to the IRB adjudicator who convened his 52nd detention review earlier this month.

With his 5-foot-7, 170-pound frame slumped in a chair, his only discernible movement over the video-link from jail during the hour-long hearing was the occasional scratch of his nose or rub of his scarred forehead.

The Refugee Law Office, a division of Legal Aid, has taken up his perplexing case, appealing his detention to the Federal Court of Canada.

“I accept the [government’s] submissions that [Mr. Walker] is not whom he claims to be and that he has been unco-operative in refusing to reveal his true identity,” Justice Richard G. Mosley ruled last month. However, he also ruled that the length of Mr. Walker’s detention was not adequately taken into account and so he ordered a fresh review.

At that fresh hearing, Karen Stewart, his public defender, argued for Mr. Walker’s release.

“This detention has become indefinite a long, long time ago. There is no prospect of CBSA resolving this,” she said. “Mr. Walker has been consistent over three years that he is a U.S. citizen.

“We are truly at an impasse here.”

IRB adjudicator Andrew Laut ruled Mr. Walker must remain behind bars.

“He is very strongly motivated … not to be removed to his country of origin as he has not yet revealed that country,” said Mr. Laut.

In a bid to break that impasse, CBSA is releasing his photograph and description, seeking help from the public in learning any information about him, including any family members, alternate names, addresses or “any organizations, military or educational institutions” he was associated with.

A CBSA phone line — 905-405-3887 — and email address — walker@cbsa-asfc.gc.ca– has been established to receive tips. Meantime, the IRB will assess Mr. Walker’s detention every 30 days. His next hearing is set for June 2, when he will likely seek release yet again.